When I first heard he’d taken another Greek tragedy and set it down (again) in East Los Angeles, I was reluctant to give playwright Luis Alfaro a vote of confidence. Previously he’d transformed “Elektra” into “Electricidade” and “Oedipus Rex” into “Oedipus El Rey,” and like someone who keeps dipping fingers into the cookie jar he’s back with “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” based on the “Medea” of Euripides. “Electricidade,” I recalled, had left me with mixed feelings.
Whatever skepticism I’d carried with me to the Getty Villa was replaced by admiration by the time I left. “Mojada” has been up and running, under the stars in the amphitheater, where Greek or Roman plays of the Classical era have been stage, one every summer, for the past ten years. Some of the productions are fairly straightforward, and some, whether the current work by Alfaro, directed ably as usual by Jessica Kubzansky, or “Peace,” a Three Stooges-like offering by Culture Clash, take inventive liberties at every turn.
In the original tale, before Alfaro moved Colchis to Michoacan and Corinth to Boyle Heights, Jason and his Argonauts embark on an expedition of thievery, to steal the Golden Fleece. Medea, impressed by the foreigners, helps them with their caper, thus betraying her father, brother, countrymen, etc., but later her relationship with Jason, despite producing two sons, hits the skids when Jason decides to ditch Medea for someone of a higher social class. Medea, scorned, has her bloody revenge. It’s the Greek way, you know.
Alfaro has tamped down his rendition, as supposedly we live in a more civilized era where not every slight is answered by a drawn sword.
Medea (Sabina Zuniga) and Hason (Justin Huen), along with their son Acan (Anthony Gonzalez, also Quinn Marquez) and maid Tita (Vivis Colombetti), haven’t exactly sailed across treacherous Aegean waters, but to get from Mexico to the United States a voyage as uncertain and as harrowing had to be endured. This is recounted by Tita as a flashback late in the play, visually conveyed using only a few movable segments of a chain-link fence. If nothing else, this riveting episode should make one more sympathetic to the plight of the migrant and the refugee.
In “Mojada” (a derogatory term, “wetback”), Medea and Hason are undocumented immigrants, in this country for a couple of years now, and getting by on whatever low-paying jobs they can find–Hason as a day laborer, Medea as a seamstress. Like everyone else, they want a better life for themselves and for their son.
We won’t necessarily know all of this from the get-go, but “Mojada” is largely a play about assimilation. And when we talk about assimilation we need to take into account tradition, that part of ourselves nurtured by our ancestors and the land of our birth or upbringing. What happens here is that Hason gets one foot in the door, but there’s a price to be paid.
Amida (Marlene Forte) owns the apartment where Hason and Medea live, and furthermore Hasan is one of her employees. Amida is also Hispanic like them, but a success story whose hard-edged, no-nonsense approach has enabled her to survive and prosper. It seems that she’s willing to help Hason fulfill the American dream, and she’s even dazzled little Acan with gifts. But she doesn’t want Medea in the picture.
The beauty of Alfaro’s play is that his characters aren’t drawn in black and white. Hason asserts that he wants the best for his family, and he seems sincere. He believes he can acquiesce to Amida’s demands and yet not forsake Medea. But perhaps what he desires doesn’t allow him to see that Amida holds all the cards and that she is not a compassionate person. But is she really a villain? Again these are nuanced characters, not stickfigure stereotypes.
Medea, this one and the one created by Euripides, is a woman pushed into a corner.
“Mojada” doesn’t get off to the best start possible–a surfeit of Spanglish is a little annoying–but Alfaro does successfully convert the foreign substance of an ancient Greek myth into an emotional, intellectual bundle that today’s audience can grasp. And while the tragedy ensnares Hason, Medea, Acan, and Amida in particular, the tale is also buoyed and rounded out by Tita as the occasional narrator (or one-woman chorus) and by Zilah Mendoza as Josefina, a friendly neighbor willing to help… at least up to a point, before darker secrets emerge.
This is a fine play, compelling and memorable, and further enhanced by its technical crew, scenic designer Efren Delgadillo, Jr., lighting designer Ben Zamora, sound designer Bruno Louchouarn, and many others.
Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. in the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Hwy., Pacific Palisades. Tickets, $42 on Friday and $45 on Saturday. (310) 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER
